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German tense in subordinate clauses | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Questions About Your Target Languages |  | |
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5265 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes  Speaks: German*, English | Message 9 of 12 01 July 2014 at 8:45am | IP Logged | ||||||||
This sentence, though grammatically correct, sounds rather old fashioned. You're more likely to hear something like: Im Mai letzten Jahres wollte ich am Abend noch schnell Brot holen, bevor die Geschäfte schließen/zu sind. IMHO, this structure is similar to a reported speech sentence. On that day, the speaker might have said to someone else: Ich muss noch schnell Brot holen, bevor die Geschäfte schließen/zu sind. It wouldn't make tense to use a past tense form in the subordinate clause, because the event hasn't happened yet. When the speaker talks about this event one year later, s/he still uses the present tense, because s/he refers to that specific point in time when the stores were still open. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5728 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 10 of 12 01 July 2014 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
The last lesson in the course is an Email, rather than a dialogue, which may explain the old-fashioned language. See, this is the kind of thing I mean, it's tricky. The Email is explaining to her friend how she met her partner, so let's imagine that a year later she is married and writes to another friend that, when she left the house that day, she didn't know she would meet her future husband. I imagine she would say something like: Als ich das Haus verließ, wusste ich nicht, dass ich an diesem Tag meinen zukünftigen Mann kennenlernen würde.... Please correct any mistakes in that sentence, of course. Now, even though she is, again, referring to a point of time when the story is still open, am I right in thinking that you couldn't use the present tense here? Could you say something like this? Als ich das Haus verließ, wusste ich nicht, dass ich an diesem Tag meinen zukünftigen Mann kennenlerne... Is this idea of referring to a point when the future is still open, something that only applies to clauses after temporal conjunctions like "bevor"? Thanks again for your help. Edited by Random review on 01 July 2014 at 2:14pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Doitsujin Diglot Senior Member Germany Joined 5265 days ago 1256 posts - 2363 votes Speaks: German*, English | Message 11 of 12 02 July 2014 at 7:30am | IP Logged | ||||||||
That's exactly what I'd say. I might add "noch" (... wusste ich noch nicht ...), but your translation is OK as it is.
You might see the present tense used in these types of sentences in informal German. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||||||||
| Random review Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5728 days ago 781 posts - 1310 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish Studies: Portuguese, Mandarin, Yiddish, German | Message 12 of 12 02 July 2014 at 5:01pm | IP Logged | ||||||||
Head spinning now ha ha. Thanks for all your help. I have quite a few learning grammars and textbooks that I use and (amazingly) none of them cover this. Somewhere in my boxes of books I have a comprehensive reference grammar, I'm just going to have to bite the bullet and spend a few hours digging it out. If it explains the rules, I'll post them here. Again, thanks for your help (and your patience). 1 person has voted this message useful |
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